It is interesting that Ms Eagle talks only about diverting funding for roads to boost cycling infrastructure. If the £50bn HS2 rail project were cancelled, for example (no, we’re not obsessed with HS2 – it’s just a good example in this case), and this money diverted to funding cycling schemes, then the Government could buy every person in England a new Raleigh 700C bike (retail price £260), at a total cost of £13.8bn, and still have £36bn in change left over to build dedicated infrastructure for everybody to cycle on. All without touching the roads budget. Just a thought.

Another thought, of course, is whether there is or is not the significant latent demand for cycling infrastructure that the suggestion of much more spending on cycling implies. Here, a recently Parliamentary written answer suggested that nationwide only a tiny fraction of journeys are undertaken by bike, and that this is not expected to change significantly for at least a couple of decades, which suggests that spending lots of money on cycling infrastructure is not a good idea.

On the other hand, however, the recently launched DfT/TfL plan to improve cycling safety in London says that during the rush hour in central London a pretty hefty 25% of all vehicles are bikes. So there quite clearly is strong demand for good cycling infrastructure, but only in certain places. At the moment London is leading the way; if the right money is spent on the right schemes then will other cities follow? Only one way to find out.

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Rather than being devisve, it would be better if the roads budget was spent in more holistic way, incorporating high-quality cycling infrastructure into road building and renewal schemes by default. As the long term trend, not that the government accept this, is falling traffic, especially on the strategic network, it should therefore be focused on the secondary and urban networks, currently crumbling, creaking and dangerous to all.

I think what you’re trying to infer is that the British public are not genetically capable of riding bicycles in significant numbers. Like they didn’t between 1880 and 1950, for example. Or like the Dutch do now. Of course not. How silly of us ‘cyclists’. It’s just a sport, right? Not an issue of giving taxpayers safe, easy choices about whether to take 1500kg of steel with them to purchase a pint of milk, drop off a library book or a child to school.

anyway, the required £1Bn a year to fund Dutch levels of cycling infrastructure could come from the subsequent £5Bn in NHS savings on obesity treatment. Wouldn’t need to touch the precious roading budget at all 😉

“nationwide only a tiny fraction of journeys are undertaken by bike, and that this is not expected to change significantly for at least a couple of decades, which suggests that spending lots of money on cycling infrastructure is not a good idea”

Don’t you think this might because there isn’t decent cycling infrastructure in this country? There is a great deal of latent demand for cycling across the UK as demonstrated by the increases in cycling through the (arguably below par) efforts of Sustrans. At the moment many people have a genuine fear of being killed whilst cycling on UK roads and therefore don’t.